When Susan Vieira of California found out her new heart came from a young woman with a long bucket list, she vowed to live it out those dreams.

Nursing student Kristina Chesterman, 21, was killed by a drunk driver last year as she was biking home home from class at Chico State University in California. Her organs went to five different people. Retired nurse Susan Vieira, 64, received her heart and will try to complete the tasks on Kristina's bucket list.

It’s the story of how a beautiful 21-year-old nursing student at California’s Chico State University, hit last September while cycling home from class by a driver who left her crumpled and unconscious at the scene, lives on through others.

Saving a life was just one item on the tattered bucket list Kristina Chesterman’s parents found in her makeup bag after she died from her injuries in hospital.

What her family did not expect to find is the woman who received Kristina’s heart. Not only is she a retired nurse — a coincidence in itself — but she had already ticked off many of the items on that bucket list throughout her own adventurous life.

Now she plans to cross out as many of the rest as she can.

“Kristina wanted to travel to four out of seven continents and my goal in life has been to travel to 100 countries,” Susan Vieira, 64, says by phone from her home in Campbell, Calif.

“It’s only been 67 so far but I’m down now to the hardest, more remote off-the-beaten-track places. Nepal was a challenge; I did that 25 years ago. Now I still have to go to Madagascar and see the ring-tailed lemurs and I haven’t seen the pyramids in Egypt yet.”

Other items on Kristina’s list that Vieira has run through?

Drive the iconic Route 66 through the U.S. Check.

Float in a hot-air balloon. Yup.

Ride a camel. Fly first class. Done and done.

Learn to pilot a plane. Been there, done that, got the licence.

“It’s just so ironic,” Kristina’s mother, Sandra, tells the Star from Livermore, Calif. “It’s almost like she hand-picked Susan who had done so many things she wanted to do — and Susan is a nurse which is what Kristina was going to school for.”

The happenstances don’t stop there.

Vieira, who is still recovering from the surgery, learned who her heart donor was when a friend read a story in the San Jose Mercury News about a nursing student who had a bucket list, and who was tragically killed.

“My friend called me and said this sounds exactly like you,” Vieira recalls, adding she tracked down Sandra Chesterton right away on Facebook. The next day, they met face-to-face and felt an immediate bond.

“The heart is who you are which is why it was important for me to find Susan,” says Sandra, who is happy to share this story. “It actually does bring me comfort knowing that the world is getting to know who Kristina was and what she was about. She was very special.”

Kristina’s friends and family have come together to establish a nursing scholarship in her name. And ground is about to be broken for a clinic in Nigeria, one of the places where Kristina had hoped to work with Doctors Without Borders.

“I think that what struck me the most about her list was that she wanted to save a life, which she did in her death,” says Sandra. “She saved many lives.”

Kristina’s kidneys, liver and pancreas went to several other people, including two babies and a family friend.

Meanwhile, the man charged with killing Kristina faces seven felony charges, including some relating to drug trafficking. He is being held on half a million dollars bail.

As for the rest of Kristina’s bucket list? Run through a field of poppies. Visit the Smithsonian. Tour Niagara Falls. Learn to play chess. Beat somebody at it. Go skydiving. Get married and have children. Become Homecoming Queen.

Vieira feels she can manage most of them.

“Have kids? That’s not going to happen for me,” she laughs. “Go parachuting. I don’t know if I will be able to do that without breaking a hip.”

But Vieira has let little stop her in the past.

One thing she can guarantee Kristina did already.

“She wanted to be remembered as a ‘smiley girl’ and she accomplished that.”

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